Welfare Not Warfare

The Chancellor’s budget statement at the end of October is the point when Andy Burnham’s government will be expected to move from aspiration to the pounds-and-pence reality of what a reset Labour government should be spending public money on in the years ahead. A bloated military budget is chief among the ‘difficult choices’ the PM acknowledges he’s struggling with. LABOUR CND is calling for a rethink.

When Labour took office in July 2024 the MoD’s budget was £64.4 billion, around 2.3% of UK GDP and well above the Nato benchmark. When Andy Burnham took over in July, it was £68.3bn and rising. Military spending is planned to reach almost £80bn/pa in 2029 – 2.7% GDP on core defence alone, out with intelligence and security. It is set to rise to 3% in 2030 and 3.5% in 2035.

The most substantial MoD funding escalation occurred only three weeks before Burnham took office. The DIP, Defence Investment Plan, introduced £15bn in new funding over the next four years. This was only part funded by cuts of 1% in all other government budgets leaving Burnham’s team with a shortfall of £4.7bn to fill at a time of persistently weak economic growth.

Investment in armaments does not grow the economy. War, the outcome of that investment, obliterates human life, ravages the environment, and demolishes social and economic infrastructure. War on a grand scale will destroy society’s long-term ability to recover, as examples across the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa attest.

The PM and his Chancellor should listen to the TUC when, for the second time in two years, Congress

has called for welfare not warfare as the UCU’s Motion 75, Building Real Security, does. The UCU reaffirmed TUC25 policy and called on the General Council to build on the campaign ‘by advancing a trade union vision of security based on decent work, quality public services, equality, climate action, democracy and peace’.

The motion acknowledged ‘lasting security is advanced through social justice, diplomacy, peacebuilding, human rights and respect for international law’. In a forthright speech, GS Jo Grady insisted: ‘The global arms race does not make us feel safer. Security is having stable employment with a decent wage.’

As Grady says: ‘Every pound spent on bombs doesn’t get a homeless person off the streets; it doesn’t build a new school; it doesn’t feed a hungry child. It doesn’t help a desperate NHS, a crumbling transport infrastructure or the crucial need for a programme of in-sourcing and re-nationalisation.’

In the interests of the over-whelming majority of people in Britain, Labour CND urges the goverment to rethink its commitment to increasing military spending, as a matter of utmost urgency.